The Commonwealth

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 518, 27 May 1949, Page 16

The Commonwealth

THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE | NATIONS. By Nicholas eet Geoffrey | Cumberlege, London, for The Royal Insti- | tute of International Affairs. 8/6. ) ROFESSOR MANSERGH, in ) these studies of British Commonwealth relations, is tolerant of their informality and looseness, _in which he sees a deep wisdom, and suspicious of the pedlars of constitutional machinery as a means of organising action. "If the peoples of the Commonwealth do not feel called upon to act with determination and decision in foreign affairs, that is something which constitutional machinery cannot remedy. It can interpret a common will, it cannot create it." This, admittedly, is the. view of the great majority who think about such matters, but one who happens to belong to the small minority may be allowed to bicker. May it not be that a "common will" exists, waiting to be organised, but for the obsession of leaders of public opinion with obsolete assumptions, associated with historic memories of "Downing Street rule’? If the Commonwealth is for its members "a form of reinsurance against aggression," is it not equally true that the effectiveness of a defensive combination depends substantially upon its being thought effective? | If "each and all are strengthened by

| the knowledge that in the last resort a | challenge to world peace .. . would enlist the support of their partner | States in the Commonwealth," is the | last resort early enough? Professor |Mansergh respects the polite orthodoxy, initiated by the studied ambiguities of Balfour, which is perpetually prepared to whittle down its expectations of the Commonwealth association until even the demand for agreement, except in extremity, is "tut-tutted" as an unattainable and indeed a presumptuous hope | to cherish, and until the res publica dis'solves into thin air, He lays great emphasis on the virtues of consultation, but the destiny of discussion should be decision; if it is not, the member States -come out by that same door as in they went. In this stimulating little book, Professor Mansergh is rightly preoccupied with the problem of nationalism, ‘to which he gives a local habitation in ‘his remarks on India, the Far East and Eire. On the last of these he writes with special authority. The rapid transformation of the Commonwealth during and since the war is hardly yet to be seen in perspective, but the author of these interim reflections has shown qualities which prepare a welcome for the longer survey he promises on Commonwealth affairs from 1939 to 19040.

N. C.

Phillips